Monday, January 16, 2012

Diane Ravitch Blocked Me on Twitter

Ya know, of these days, Diane Ravitch is going to surprise me by doing or saying something that's even slightly even-handed, balanced or thoughtful – but today's not that day! The moment the NBER study came out, she quickly realized that the findings weren't consistent with the talking points of her union boss buddies so she went into full-scale attack mode WITHOUT EVEN READING THE REPORT (how typical). She starting tweeting all sorts of questions and critiques, which were answered in the paper, but when a senior at Duke, Tom Burr, tweeted back with this information and challenged her, SHE BLOCKED HIM. I am NOT making this up! See Burr's blog post on Teach For Us.org below, where he documents the exchange – and concludes by calling her out for the fraud that she is:

: @DianeRavitch You asked a question, I answered it, you refused to acknowledge. People are being misled by you whether you mean it or not.

@TomBurr: @DianeRavitch Nearly all of the questions you ask can be found in the paper that you ave(sic) not read. Fits my definition of cheapening debate.

And that is the real point of my story. Were some anonymous rando(myself, for example) asking questions like Diane Ravitch was, there would be no problem. Yes, they could find these things themselves, but its just annoying and not harmful. Diane Ravitch, however, has a greater responsibility as an academic and as a public figure. I'm repeating myself, but for her to rapid-fire off seemingly incriminating questions without bothering to read the actual paper the article is based on is disgusting. Furthermore, when her questions are answered, refusing to acknowledge them is out and out dishonesty.

Finally, when I woke up this morning, I found that she had blocked me. In my opinion, she is a fraud.